NYAPRS Note: A state funded initiative that was launched last month by NYAPRS, the Mental Health Empowerment Project and Alcoholism Providers of NYS is getting steadily increasing attention, including an upcoming ‘kickoff’ webinar, “NYS Medicaid Managed Care is Changing: We Can Help You Understand How on Wednesday, August 23, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. You can Register for the Webinar, using event number 646 876 402 and event password nysomh123. To schedule a presentation, please contact us at 518-621-1347 or eileenc@nyaprs.org.

Behavioral-health provider organizations in New York have launched a peer outreach initiative in collaboration with various state agencies. The goal is to get more people with mental-health and substance-abuse issues to utilize the home-and-community-based services and care coordination now covered through Medicaid.

The state Office of Mental Health is funding a series of peer-education forums in venues such as libraries and houses of worship, which aim to get people to enroll in Medicaid health homes and to sign up for health and recovery plans, or HARPs, which are managed-care plans for people with significant behavioral-health needs.

"These are complex changes that are taking place and lots of effort has been put in to explain it to providers, but an insufficient amount has been done to explain it to patients," said Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, one of the organizations helping to organize the forums.

Enrollment in health and recovery plans began in New York City in 2015 and in the rest of the state the following year.

As of July 2017 there were 88,577 people enrolled in HARPs statewide, up 85% from July 2016. In New York City growth slowed after the initial enrollment period, but HARP membership still increased by about 25% between July 2016 and July 2017.

"Enrollment is growing," Rosenthal said, "but everybody would like it to be more."